Joy Ride

 

Our rating: 2 out of 5

Rated: R

reviewed by Charity Bishop
 

Admit it: at some point or another, you've wanted to play a prank on someone. Maybe you even did, and faced repercussions. I once short-sheeted someone's bed, but the trick was that he was too short and the sheet too long to notice. That ended my stint with practical jokes. But some jokes can turn dangerous. This is the lesson learned by two teenagers in the thrilling Joy Ride, a semi-nail-biter, semi-slasher-thriller that is actually quite entertaining, almost believable, and delivers an expected but climactic ending.

Facing a long summer after exhausting finals and an unremarkable school year, all Lewis Thomas (Paul Walker) wants to do is win the girl of his dreams. His opportunity comes when Venna (Leelee Sobieski) breaks up with her long-term boyfriend and alludes that she'd love to see Lewis again, if he could get a ride to Colorado. Making the immediate purchase of a cool clinker, Lewis starts out from California with the intention of swinging into Utah and bailing his brother Fuller (Steve Zahn) out of jail. Along the way they have a ham radio installed on the dashboard, and enjoy the fun of listening in on other driver's conversations. Bored because no one will talk to them, Fuller encourages his brother to broadcast a female voice over the airwaves. It picks up a response from an interested trucker that soon turns the conversation flirty.

Deciding that this is too much fun to quit, and after a run-in with a jerk staying at the local hotel, the boys set up the ultimate practical joke: at midnight, their mysterious voice on the radio will show up at the room next door looking for the woman who invited him to spend the night. Their practical joke backfires when the following morning the occupant of room 17 is found bleeding to death on the highway with his jaw literally ripped off. The police are disapproving of the true story behind the incident, but can do nothing to find this mysterious trucker. Then his voice comes back on the air. He doesn't appreciate the joke... and terrorizes the boys. He knows about the broken headlight on their car. He nearly pulverizes them into a tree. Then he disappears for awhile, just long enough for the boys to think they're fancy free and footloose. But shortly after picking up Venna and continuing on their road trip, the psychopath reappears.

Slasher movies really aren't my thing, but I picked this one up due to Leelee Sobieski's involvement, and discovered that it's actually a fairly intelligent thriller. It won't cause many brain cells to spark, but isn't quite as stupid as most in the genre. There's an interesting premise, likable characters, and a fantastic climax, not to mention numerous chilling incidents... such as the chase scene through the corn field. Anyone who has ever been in a corn field knows that it's creepy enough at night without having a Mac truck bearing down on you. True, the ending is clichd but delivers enough of a punch that audiences will find it enjoyable. The major deterrent here is some nonsexual nudity (the voice on the airwaves commands the boys to strip naked and go inside a diner to order lunch; they comply, and we see numerous glimpses of their backsides, and frontal shots of their hands covering up their crotches) and profanity (the f-word gets a regular workout, around fifteen abuses). There is no outright sexual content, but we do see Vetta in her underwear, and Fuller inquires coarsely if his brother has been sleeping with her.

Violence is involved and sometimes graphic but never becomes extreme. We see the man in the hospital with his jaw torn off, leaving a gaping, bloody hole in his face. A truck bears down on a little car, crushing it against a tree. We hear women screaming in the background over the airwaves; he has picked up one of Venna's friends. Characters are physically assaulted and placed into dangerous positions. Policeman shoot a man dead; his bloodied corpse is seen after plowing through a wooden fence. Fuller is thrown through a window, landing on a piece of the fence that stabs a pipe through his leg; his assailant pushes his foot down on the wound. There's also a fair amount of alcohol present, as the three primary characters get rip roaring drunk at a bar. The special features on the disk aren't too involved, but do have several alternate endings (each of them interesting).

I wasn't too pleased with some of the content issues presented, but found Joy Ride to be more of a Thrill Ride. Worth seeing, if nameless, faceless psychopaths stalking innocent teens is your cup of tea.